In the field of computing devices, functionalities previously implemented using general purpose computing systems are now being implemented using new peripheral hardware devices, also referred to as peripheral devices. Standards for connections between peripheral devices include the USB (Universal Serial Bus) standard, the Firewire standard, the PCI (Peripheral Connector Interface) standard, etc. An additional interface is discussed, for example, by P. H. W. Leong, et al., in “Pilchard—A Reconfigurable Computing Platform With Memory Slot Interface,” 2001, IEEE, Symposium On Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM). The disclosure of the Leong et al. reference is hereby incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
Most computing systems run using an operating system, such as a Windows operating system, a Linux operating system, a Unix operating system, an Apple/Macintosh operating system, etc. The different operating systems, however, cannot generally exchange device drivers and/or code that allow a peripheral hardware device to interact with the operating system. Moreover, even if a custom peripheral hardware device is provided with an appropriate device driver for a particular operating system, custom code may still be required within the operating system to allow interaction between the operating system and the peripheral hardware device.